STOPzilla 5
Published by: Codrut Nistor, in Reviews
October16th2007
No matter how good is your antivirus, there's always room for better, and you can throw eggs at me, if that's what you wish, but I think there's no perfect antivirus around, yet. The amount of threats is simply huge, and there's no program that can act as an efficient protection against trojans, worms, spyware, network attacks and the entire army of computer viruses in the wild, so people end up using at least 2-3 specialized programs to protect their computers, or an all-in-one suite. Today, I want to talk about a program that I must admit it was a real surprise for me, because I never heard of it so far: STOPzilla!
Setup
Installing this program is pretty tricky, because STOPzilla is not one of those "download, install and run" programs... but it's not really different either. As you can see in the screenshot to the left, the so-called "setup program" downloads another installer from the official site. The good part is that the downloader has about 65KB in size, and the size of the downloaded package seems to be only a few times larger, with about 300KB, but it was interesting to find out that the program requires no less than 38MB of disk space. |  |  |
Now, my final advice regarding the setup of this program is to be careful when you're asked about the STOPzilla toolbar, because I know most people don't like an Internet Explorer full of toolbars. While the Homepage Protection is a useful feature, I don't think most users are really going to use the toolbar, so don't hurry up when clicking those "Next" buttons!
Interface
As I expected, STOPzilla looks like most antispyware tools, and that's "very good and beyond". The graphics are crystal clear, suggestive and were done using vivid colors, which may be highly appreciated by some, while others won't go "WOW" at all. In the end, it's all about one's taste, and from my point of view, STOPzilla looks great, has an interface that's very easy to use and well organized, so working with the program shouldn't be a headache, at least not until you run into trouble with it, as I did...Features
The first stage of my torment today started as soon as I finished installing the program. Since there was no "Start the application" option to select, I thought I will have to start STOPzilla myself. The good part is that the program started automatically, but the bad part is that it also started a full computer scan without asking me anything, because I am sure that my text files and the images of my audio CD collection can't be infected by anything, but...
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Anyway, to make a (very!) long story short, STOPzilla scanned my entire computer and found about 400 (!) "infections". I'll leave the surprise for later, and I won't tell you anything about the evil threats that are crawling inside my PC, because I want to tell you about the program's features now...
All the tools of the application are easily accessible from the menu located to the left of the main window, but it's enough to go inside the Home area to get a better view of this program's capabilities. The good part is that you get real time spyware protection, a built in pop-up blocker, as well as protection from Phishing attacks and other threats coming from malicious Web sites, offered by the SITEguard module. Even more, the two Quick Tools from the Home screen allow you to easily remove Cookies and clear your browser's history.
To get intimate with all the main tools of the program, namely the real time protection, pop-up blocker and the SITEguard, you have to access their pages, and that is done using the menu. If you press the buttons from the Home area, you can disable and enable these modules.
Each of the tools has extremely detailed settings - for example the real time protection module allows you to control browser protection, network monitoring, system protection and more. All the settings are well explained, and if the tips are not enough, you can check the built in Help contents. Anyway, you can discover a lot by yourselves, because I want to tell you what I promised...
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...let's get to my awful infection! Spyware, trojans, malware, it's all here, on my computer! Oh, my! Well, let's see what I got in the Results area... I don't want to become boring, but you have to find out that this program is not what it claims to be. Its awards? Awards are granted by most big sites to get another incoming link, not to make things right for the user(there are some exceptions, of course), and it's sad to see so many big names on STOPzilla's official page. Anyway, let's check some infections that I got...
"Media-Codec/Trojan", found in Winamp 5.5's setup package, just downloaded from the official page. Obviously, not a Trojan. Even more, I ask myself since when did media codecs become a threat?!?
"Klez.H Worm/Spyware, Worm", found in virtually every file related to Wink, the well known freeware screen capture application. According to the description found on Symantec's site, things started to look serious. It's enough to say that Symantec considers the removal to be difficult, and the damage level, medium. The fact is that once it's loaded, this worm "Copies itself to %System%Wink
The funny ending is that the real-time protection worked great - I wasn't able to run a clean program that's also used by thousands of users all over the world, because STOPzilla did its job in an instant, removing the program from my hard drive!
The Good
STOPzilla comes with all the features one needs from an antispyware program, an excellent interface and very good documentation, accompanied by a decent price.
The Bad
It would have been simply amazing for everything to work as advertised, but it doesn't. One disaster is enough, and I don't even want to imagine what would happen if next time, STOPzilla is going to recognize some core system components as a certain spyware or Trojan!
Conclusion
A lot of antispyware tools look great but don't work that great, and I must confess that STOPzilla is one of the greatest disappointments I had this year. It's not the awards, it's not the claims on the official site about all those features, it's the feeling that you got your hands on a crystal statue that's going to be perfect for your living room, but you end up finding out that all you got is cheap plastic...
If you really want to spend $19.95 foolishly, give it to a beggar that's going to drink it all in the closest bar, or buy a tiny piece of land in another galaxy (I don't know where you can get that, but you can try asking around)!
As a final thought, I hope this program is going to solve its problems and work properly as soon as possible, because it's really a pity to see it have this kind of problems, when it promises so much...
Developer: iS3, Inc.
Price: $19.95
Trial Link: Download
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9 Comments on STOPzilla 5
On 10/17/2007 at 7:57 pm doug rosbury said:
Thanks for the warning. My computer is working quite well. I have Mcafee and two other programs and all is well. If the machine is working as I need it to I wont get excited. I'm tired of companies sucking me in and then telling me I need to purchase a "registered version". This is dishonest and sneaky and I would't put up with this kind of behavior from any person. Thanks, Doug Rosbury
On 10/17/2007 at 9:28 pm Brian said:
Before I dumped Windows XP for Ubuntu, I was using AVG's Anti-Malware 7.5. Real time anti-virus and anti-spyware/malware/badware scanning. Good stuff! :)
On 10/18/2007 at 9:20 am KodrutZ said:
doug, I can't say it was a pleasure to write this warning, especially since I had a hard time with this program, but it's really nice to know that other people won't fall into the STOPzilla trap, once they read my review.
Brian, I am sure you're not using any antispyware tool in Ubuntu now! ;) By the way, I'll probably drop Ubuntu for Open Suse 64bit soon, but I must admit that Ubuntu is a pretty good choice for the average computer user, despite its problems (no matter how friendly they claim it to be, sooner or later you'll end up editing configuration files in the console...).
On 06/14/2008 at 1:55 am chubb said:
I have been using Stopzilla for little more than four (actually 3 years) years and it is THE best -- ever. It has never failed my computers and the customer service is the best I have experienced. I use Stopzilla and an anti-virus and not one computer on my system fails to work. My old laptop went down in 06. I left for a 12 month tour in Iraq and came back in Nov of 07. I called up Stopzilla and they renewed my registration for my new laptop; no issues or questions asked. They are by far #1 in my book. I have used other programs and my computers have had problem after problem; not Stopzilla. It cleans up my pc and it works. Period. My lifelong key was only $39.95 and it still works. I recommend Stopzilla to everyone I get a chance to yack to about anti-virus/anti-spyware.
On 06/08/2009 at 10:20 pm Ray said:
It's strange to me that you've had all of these problems. I've been a Stopzilla lifetime subscriber for at least 6 years and have it installed on 3 of my own PC's, one with Vista. All 3 have lifetime subscriptions. I've never once had any of the problems that you've mentioned.
I operate my own PC repair shop (7 yrs) and have recommended and installed this program on a minimum of 100 PC's and all of those who have it have loved the program and thanked me for the recommendation.
When I encounter a computer that has a spyware problem, I remove the hard drive and connect it via USB to my main computer and scan that hard drive with Stopzilla to remove most of the critters that are in there. (Won't remove things that require the hard drive to be in a running PC). This allows me to at least check for any further problems that an otherwise spyware laden computer won't allow.
The only problem that I have is that they've not introduced a 64 bit version and that's now what I have on my main computer. Their tech support says that's going to be available this month. (June 2009)
On 06/08/2009 at 10:28 pm Ray said:
Just another quick comment.
Things that you don't want blocked by Stopzilla can be allowed by using the tools available in the program. Anything that it says is a trojan or spyware of any type can also be allowed. It's almost like training a firewall.
On 01/24/2010 at 1:20 am Anthony said:
StopZilla is an example of the worst kind of software available on the Net; it installs, does a scan and finds lots of "malware", doesn't allow you to remove the so-called problems, rips you off for $39.95 (even though it says it's only $9.95 - you have to SNAIL-MAIL! a rebate request form) and then, once the software is fully functional, it cleans up the so-called malware, in the process rendering the computer unable to boot except in safe mode.
I foolishly thought checking the logs might enable me to put things right but THEY AREN'T IN PLAIN TEXT!!!
Do NOT use this software...it's simply rubbish.
On 02/20/2010 at 3:34 pm Ronny said:
I used Stopzilla for years, it was OK and working.
Newly they added the Stopzilla-Toolbar and Stopzilla searches the web with the ASK.COM searchengine, this is absolutely bullshit, it overwrites your original searchengine, for example if it is Google you get ask.com.
if you uninstall stopzilla, the toolbar is still there in Firefox and IE8. There is no option that you install stopzilla without the toolbar, you have to take it and to get rid of this piece of junk is nearly impossible.
There is a solution to get rid of the toolbar after uninstalling Stopzilla, if you google the web you find it easily.
Stopzilla by itself is for me now nothing else as spyware and I warn everybody to install and use this piece of shit.
Do NOT spend money for Stopzilla, its absolutely not worth a penny.
On 06/06/2010 at 1:14 am Angel said:
honestly i also think STOPZILLA! is a piece of junk i have Vipre and its way better
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